ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY RECOMMENDS: BOOKS

Review: 'Goodbye Tsugumi' fresh teen portrait

(Entertainment Weekly) -- Before her family moved to Tokyo, Maria Shirakawa lived in a seaside town in Japan, where her uncle ran a hotel and her cousin Tsugumi grew from a sickly girl into an energetically nasty one: ''It wasn't narcissism. And it wasn't exactly an aesthetic.... Tsugumi had this perfectly polished mirror, and she only believed in the things she saw reflected there.''

Maria will go back for ''one last summer at the inn.'' She will become aware that ''nothing lasts forever.''

Despite the tiredness of the premise and the orchestrated tenderness of the plot, Banana Yoshimoto, the author of cult favorites ''Kitchen'' and ''Asleep,'' freshly conjures teenage growing pains, creating a vital portrait of a complicated friendship.

Grade: B+